Dark Land
by jhalya
Summary: The good fade, the worst are undone. Only the bad answer his call. Post Golden Army. [ON HIATUS]
1. Chapter 1

**PROLOGUE**

**-**_ In the dark, the Face of Death smiles -_

She could feel it in the air. Whispers of it travelled on ripples in the murky brown waters of the inner lakes of Bethmoora. Power never fades, not if it's true. But when it dwindles, the _world_ around it shivers in empathy.

_So pass the princes of Elfland into nothingness. _

She looked down at her own hands then, the woman in the shadows, and they were fleshy and pale. Should you squint and let your inner vision prevail, you could see the glimmering seal a curse had wrapped around the flesh: locked in imperfection, never to know the cool smoothness of tree marble, the personal death of all Elven kind.

She may rot her way through the ages, the woman thought wryly, but the princes down below – or up ahead, it didn't really matter among the tattered ruins of the fabled city – were stone cold in the Golden Chamber. Unmoved, broken and soulless. Or almost so.

In such conditions speed was of the essence, and the woman stirred.

* * *

><p>The task was tedious and laborious, so she planned well ahead before attempting the trek into Goblin turf. Many a deaths lingered there, some unfulfilled and unfriendly, but none that truly concerned her. They would not see her, nor hear her, nor pick up her scent from the dust filled air. She would move swiftly and surely, for all was shadow and darkness underground. She sprinkled trinkets to keep the Goblin happy, though not entirely unassuming. She prayed none, but cursed profusely at the lingering waifs fogging their insubstantial bodies around the winding path she had to travel.<p>

At last, the Golden Chamber loomed large ahead. The steps seemed more difficult to climb this time around or maybe the woman felt wearier than before.

**_Much toil…_**

"_Much sorrow…" _the woman answered in her mind, then shut herself out from the interferences…

"…of unholy gods."

**_There is nothing holy about death. Nothing sacred. It happens. To all._**

"Not to all." _Not to me._

The Face of Death – one of Its many, but not Its True One, and not her friend – grinned skeletically and somewhat impishly and conceded the point. The Face hovered above the ground, among the many machinations in the Chamber and eyed a discoloured patch of dust with something akin to longing.

"Two were here, and now but one."

"_For blue, for poetry, for love and lust"_ whispered the dust.

The woman sighed. For however great the hole in their heart – men, or men-like creatures, had such a soft, warm heart, all summer heat and autumn sleepiness, unlike the endless springs and dark winters that battled in the chests of her kind. She could feel the memories of love and the whirlwind of loss hanging bitterly in the air in the aftermath of the great battle. It was not a feeling lacking beauty. She silently thanked the people from above from removing the gently sleeping statue. Such was not a sight for her dead eyes.

On the floor lay broken Prince Nuada Silverlance, a ghastly mess of cinder and little blocks of human shaped tree marble. A limb, a smile, a lock of hair. An unforgiving eye staring into oblivion.

_**Such is your lord liege.** _

"Silver and gold."

**_And so were you._**

"Once. A long time ago. And the world was not poorer without me, my _lord._ It barely noticed my passing."

The broken statue offered no answer.

The woman ghosted her hands over the marbled prince and shivered at the onslaught of hate and despair wafting off his cracked body.

"Good. The dead do not hate, they do not despair, they do not _feel._ Such is your fate then."

Carefully, gingerly and reverently she pieced him back together under the eyeless scrutiny of the Face of Death.

**_And all the king's horses and all the king's men…_**

"I'm no king's man. Remember?" she laughed lightly in the Face of Death.

"The good, the bad and the worst…" the woman echoed, her attention back to the one grounded on the floor, like a severed root of ancient Aeglin. "The good don't care, the worst are undone and you know _nothing _of the truly bad, my lord. _Your people…_"

With the last piece in place and her life-blood smeared on his face and over his heart, she cried prophetically:

"You will serve your people well."

* * *

><p><em>AN: Hello there, all of you who stumbled upon this little piece of folly I just had to get out of my brain. It is a seed, I think, of something bigger, that will require a lot of nurturing to grow, so have patience and we will see where it will lead us to._

_In the meantime_, _a review or two would be nice...you know, like water to an Elemental :))_

_If not, I hope you had fun reading this:)_


	2. Chapter 2

_- Without you, poetry within me is dead – _

He could hear when he shouldn't and true to his words he couldn't stop. He could feel when he shouldn't and the world was one giant open wound and him, its throbbing centre. He could see…no, he couldn't, for the world was dark and thick and heavy. He could smell the overly sweet scent of all the rotten flowers of the universe enshrouding him in tendrils of magic. He could taste the taste of his screams and they went on forever and forever was his heartbeats.

_Dum-dum-dum! Dum-dum-dum! _Always in threes.

And in the maelstrom of his resurrection, he was alone, blind and deaf and dumb.

* * *

><p>He sifted through space, he felt, or simply fell continuously through the holes in an unfinished world. His back ached from his constant efforts of escaping some inexorable power that drew him down, down, down. Gravity relented none, so he screamed then. The shrill sound made his ears bleed.<p>

_Good. Scream. Life always begins with a scream. That's the first and last thing it'll want out of you. _

He tried to grab at the voice and grasped but air. His nostrils filled with ashes. Or was it dust?

_Sand and dust, but your heart is strong. Open your eyes…_

He opened his eyes to a smoldering heat and a vision of a bubbling pot atop a roaring fire.

Nuada the Prince had no recollection of any personal beliefs regarding life after death, but if he had ever had any, this was not it.

A figure moved silently about the room – or wherever he was confined to – and he reached for…

"There is no weapon that can harm me, Nu-ah-tha, so spare yourself the trouble."

And the disappointment, she could have added, for there was no weapon either in sight, or in reach. Nuada felt it nonetheless, a piercing absence he could not name, nor place.

He grimaced and the pain was more than he could bear. It seemed to have found residence deep within his bones and the ache was needle-hot and searing.

The pot sizzled and the sound was jarring to his ears.

"Are all clansmen of Bethmoora so prickly about their senses or are you just special?"

He traced the voice to the moving figure but that was as far as his brain was willing to process. Nevertheless, some deeply embedded instinct of war wanted nothing more than to rip out her vocal chords with his bare hands – in the absence of his preferred weapon of choice – and make her quiet.

He made a princely gesture with his hands – rolling on the cold floor, in the dirt – which might have meant : "Is there something you need to tell me?", but just as well could have been "I'm lost. Speak quickly so I might get back to my musings and perhaps your demise won't be as slow as I'm currently contemplating."

The woman – for he had discerned her to be just that – laughed quietly, but not in reverence to his frayed nerves. She was mocking him.

"And once _that_ belief is settled in your mind, you will have a hard time overcoming it. I see."

She could. Into the deepest recesses of his mind. He heard her words being echoed throughout his entire being.

"You have many an answer to ask" _demand_ – she rectified with a quick glance to his prone form "for."

He closed his eyes in bliss. And just as quickly opened them in horror.

"But it does not mean you're going to get them."

Her face was close, so close in fact that he could see a constellation of freckles on a sooty skin and eyes the colour of autumn leaves. Dark and bloody. Her hair was not the fair hair of his folk, but rich in tones he had only seen on the bark of certain human trees. Hacked short it was, with a stellar sense of unevenness, and sticking out from it, two pointy ears which were the sole attribute to link her like to elf kind. She grinned manically at him, showing off teeth of pure marble that sent a stinging in his eyes. Her breath carried the particular scent of something that happens to flowers when their roots are cut and stowed away.

_Witch!_ – his mind screamed at her.

"Quick to judge, too. Nevermind" she lifted herself from him and he gauged there was no great distance from the ground, though she did look larger than life. "It only means you are regaining your senses and faster than I dared to hope."

She smirked at him and taunted.

"Rise then, Prince of Bethmoora and demand your answers over supper. I trust you shall be hungrier than you've ever been before."

With that she left him for the damnable pot and the warmth of the fire. Despite her warning – which he resolved to ignore until he felt powerful enough to _claim _food for himself and not be fed like a dog at some witch's table – the heat would have been something he could welcome. With that goal in mind, he rolled unto his side and cursed.

Feeling was beginning to creep back into his muscles and by that he meant pain - hot white and obscene. It breached through a dam of some sort and a flood of half remembered memories paralyzed him on the spot – his left arm seemingly crushed beneath his weight. He whispered a name and hate boiled to the surface and leaked through his eyes when there was no answer.

"Reborn in a world without _her_" the witch said in tones of mock pity. "Have you no interest in novelty? Here's a world of entirely new possibilities I offered. Be thankful!" she reprimanded amidst the clings and clangs of eating bowls and tableware.

He crawled towards her on the floor, snarling and growling like an obstinate beast. He felt bereft and hollow.

"You'll get over it. All creatures under the Sun make choices and she has made hers, against you. Twice, if I read your thoughts correctly. It's high time you experienced some free will, _Your Highness…_"

The jibe at the end did it for him. He grabbed unto her leg and swept her off her feet with a swift, brutal movement. He clawed at her face and throat until his hands were sticky with her blood. When the deed was done, he collapsed and let his head fall on her chest, better to enjoy the sensation of life leaving her wretched body.

She, in return, breathed steadily against his cheek.

Small, cold hands threaded through his tangled locks, easing away the dirt and blood.

"_Nu-ah-tha _, my king of sorrow…"

His tears bled into her heart.

"What I did cannot be undone, but if your Power is true, your heart will find peace…at last."

"I…will…not fade…" he croaked and for that insinuation he could have skinned her all over again.

Gently, she pushed him up and let him fall back into her thin arms, cradling him like a lost child, for which he was mildly resentful. His eyes were liquid gold and malevolent and he knew this and approved as he could see himself in her fathomless eyes.

"You are a creature entirely too apt to hate. But even one such as you must prioritize from time to time. And there is the small matter of your duty to your people. Is this how you repay the ones who answered your call? Now, at the hour of our direst need?"

He reached out his hand and touched her face, wiping at a stray freckle.

"Dirt" he whispered and underneath it a face as white and flawless as porcelain. It was disconcerting, but it somehow made sense.

"You cannot kill me, Prince Nuada, however ardently you may wish to. One of the many things you will have to live with."

She smiled gingerly.

"From now on."

With an effort that took him beyond his limits, Nuada leapt from the ground and landed gracelessly in front of the fire-lit table, uncouthly disturbing the supper arrangement. The spilled broth – a clear golden liquid – burnt his hand. He looked startled for a moment, as if that wasn't supposed to happen, then, just as quick, he righted the bowl and let his hand hover over it as if willing it to stay put.

"Gravity has not changed since you've benn gone. Your skills however…"

The sound that broke free from low in his throat served as a sure-fire warning and he was pleased when the witch took the hint.

"…need a little brushing up."

Of course, that helped his disposition none, but the greasy, yellowish mark on his hand took precedence over everything else. He licked it cautiously and heard the elf witch chuckle mirthlessly in the background.

Hunger came over him with a rush.

"Witch…you will pay if this is a ruse."

"If it's up to you, I will pay either way, so sit down and eat. Your hunger is your own, not mine."

He gave her a dubious stare, but, still, he sat down, grabbed the bowl and poured its content down his throat, in one fierce gulp.

The scars on his face turned just a little edgier and his hair flowed white past his shoulders.

"Now speak and I shall listen…"

The witch sifted from her position on the floor to one of the still standing chairs and settled herself down in a flurry of patched up skirts.

His voice – rich and deep and solemn as a newly opened grave – caught her somewhat unawares.

"Listen…and judge."

* * *

><p><em>AN: Thanks to everybody who has taken an interest in this story:) you inspire me! Down below you have something I forgot to add in th first chapter and a playlist for this __chapter. Enjoy and don't forget to review!_

**DISCLAIMER: not mine! don't sue!**

**PLAYLIST:**

Sade – King of Sorrow

Nightwish - Gethsemane


	3. Chapter 3

„_Put out the light, and then put out the light._

_If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,_

_I can again thy former light restore_

_Should I repent me. But once put out thy light,_

_Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,_

_I know not where is that Promethean heat_

_That can thy light relume."_

The Witch – funny how that name stuck – stared intently at the disgruntled Prince, reclining majestically across her kitchen table. He found comfort in old habits, she decided, and let it fly, seeing as she really wanted to start this right. Sure, she may not die, but butchering at the hands of an irrate Elf prince was one hassle too many.

His patience was magnanimous in its length – or so he was taught to believe, but Nuada had never much learned the lessons of his life.

"Speak!" his fist commanded upon impact with the hard wooden surface. The tableware clinked and clanked in a pleading cacophony for mercy.

Witch sighed and wondered which beginning would better soothe his high-born temper. With a flick and a wave of her hand, the fire sputtered and died.

"Let me remind you, my Prince, why we all once feared the Dark."

The flickering tongues of fire crawled out of the ashes, like restless half-woken worms, then leapt and crept up her arm, dancing alluringly around her neck, until they pooled in her eyes, where gold and red and blue waged a timeless war, consuming each other with a fury.

"In the beginning", Witch said, "the Dark was great and ponderous, its colossal weight the only obstacle in its quest of devouring the universe. And in its shadow, the world we live in was created, as fragile and pure as the first snowdrop pushing its way through a coat of frost. But then, in a heartbeat that may have lasted for a million years, the dark womb spawned its terrors unto our small corner of the universe to relieve itself of its massive burden. Creation took its toll off the many living things that inhabited our world. Some dwindled and died, others were swain in, corrupted and turned into tormentors of their own kind. And others…others fought back. It was in those times, when Aeglin was but a tender sprout, its magic shielded and carefully guarded by the power of Elfland, that the armies of the Queen of Solitary Rock rode against the Dark and did battle with its evil minions."

Nuada crinkled his great golden eyes and the frown that creased his forehead was nothing less than royal. So was the thundering disdain in his voice when he next spoke:

"Didn't she stile herself _Empress _of the Solitary Rock?"

Witch flashed her toothy grin at him and approved.

"She did. But later on, the ruling clan of Bethmoora didn't much care for the imperialist undertones and proclaimed her Queen. After all, Solitary Rock was not a kingdom, nor an empire for that matter, but a rock. The _highest_ rock, true, but a rock nonetheless."

"She had great power", Nuada conceded in the name of all the slighted historians of his people. He was ever one to uphold matters of honor.

"She had True Power. And her Rock may have been small, but its people never wavered in the face of Darkness. It is said that she slew the Demon Lord, commander of the Dark Armies, with but a swing of her sword…"

"… Storm Dragon…" Nuada supplied with a faraway look on his face as if he were contemplating the thing at the very moment. His fingers twitched compulsively, but he managed to wrench himself from his reveries when Witch said nothing at all. The fire twinkled merrily in her eyes, the battle a mere dance.

The Prince straightened his stance and hardened his features.

"I thank you for the history lesson. Unless it serves a purpose, you might want to consider making it briefer."

"Cutting it short."

…

"Did I stutter?"

"That's what they say nowadays. Up above. As if you could cut heaps of millennia into small pieces with which to fill the silver spoons of insolent _little _princes so they don't choke on the vastness and complexity of their heritage."

Nuada was on his feet and the table an undistinguishable mess against the opposite wall in the blink of an eye.

But Witch did not blink and her eyes of fire did not flinch.

"_Put out the light…_" Witch sang softly and the bright light of Nuada's temper was put out. Subdued, the Prince sat down again without being asked to do so.

"Perhaps you'd like to tell the story", Witch entreated amiably.

Inside, an enraged animal was seething. Outside, Nuada was as cool as a flowing mountain spring, little bubbles of foam gurgling away as they hit some inoportune rocks on its way down to an unnamed sea.

"The Queen of Solitary Rock went mad from dark fever. It was the poison on the blade," he recounted petulantly.

"Yes, the blade was poisoned by the blood of Darkland creatures. And people were quick to judge her mad. Her Power dwindled and the Sun never rose for her again. Left unshielded, Solitary Rock became the bastion of Darkland into this fair world."

"Until the Sons of the Earth came and conquered it." A victorious smile bloomed on Nuada's blackened lips.

Witch's smile was blacker.

"If by conquer you mean raise an impregnable magic wall around it, then yes, that's what your Sons of Earth did." Appeasingly Witch added "It was a very good magic wall indeed. Goblin blood and troll power, elf magic and dwarf cunning. They also build a fortress."

At that, Nuada squirmed uncomfortably, which only translated to the visible spectrum of hearing and light as a rustle of princely clothes.

"Not quite a fortress" he heard himself say.

"A prison, if you must."

Nuada glared. Witch smiled back. It was a wicked little smile, pitch black and perfect.

"A place for the damned and damnable. Oathbreakers, murderers, sorcerers and the like. You know, the _bad_."

The ones who were less than golden, Nuada knew. The ones ill-placed at the Court of Bethmoora, for whatever reason. Somehow, his insides began to squirm too.

"The Council…"

"Your Father sentences them there."

"My Father sentences death!"

"And does he rise and deal the fatal blow himself?"

Witch took the grinding of his teeth as an eloquent denial.

"Alysum…" she whispered and had any living creature heard her then, the blood would have curdled in their veins.

Nuada simply clenched and unclenched his fist around an imaginary spear. The motion was comforting, but it did nothing to attenuate the images the word conjured in his mind – bird like heads and cleavers taller than himself.

Witch would have pried, but the light seemed to have gone out from his private little universe. Instead, she sat back in her chair and gently rocked herself to an unheard tune.

She'd been right, his power was true and his heart strong. His madness – she mussed - uncommon in a clansman of Bethmoora, what with their princely, prissy, self-important nature, had forged him into an outcast despite his royal blue blood. And yet, there was an endearing innocence in his beliefs and – at the same time – a perfect evilness in his actions, what with his warped hatred of humans. She knew the choice that flared in his eyes. Exile, though bitter, was a far lovelier illusion than the blunt reality of Alysum and the true horror that lay therein: that cruelty was equally distributed between races. Men were simply greedier, that's all. But Nuada was the son of his people and he wouldn't – _couldn't_ – entertain such notions. But most of all – Witch sighed – Nuada was a warrior, not a murderer, and warriors don't kill their own kind. The effect of education, she presumed.

"You have woken me for Alysum?"

Witch ceased her rocking and the fire flared out of her eyes and back into the hearth, where it squirmed into the ashes to lay dormant.

"It's a far livelier place than this one, for starters. And it's bound to become even more so", she poked at the sleeping element and stocked it back to brightness, "what with the fall of the wall and all that."

Witch chanced a glance Nuada's way and found him unerringly uncaring.

For his part, he felt like a man firmly grounded on solid land after a trip on a particularly trippy sea.

"That cannot be." He believed it too.

"Why ever not?"

Nuada was self-taught in many aspects, but he didn't begrudge the ignorance of others. On the contrary, he aimed to alleviate it whenever the chance arose.

"Because" and here he made sure to inflict tonalities upon his voice that would illuminate even the daftest of creatures which in his experience took the shape of the shopping mall dwellers in the human world "its magic does not waver."

Now, if he happened to enunciate, it was all for the enlightenment of the galactically stupid.

"Really now?" Witch did not sound enlightened. Impossibly so, she seemed to have sunk deeper in her ignorance. Nuada was certain there was a word in the English language that could translate his reaction to such depths of moronity, for his native Elvish had clearly failed him.

Dumbfounded. Flabbergasted. Or even the more colourful gobsmacked. Possibly all three of them together.

"Then tell me, oh great Elf Lord, what's keeping it together? The blood of goblin, the power of troll, the cunning of dwarves, the magic of Elves and all that?"

Nuada nodded dumbly, an escape on his part he managed to rectify by adding an emphatic "Yes!" to her tirade.

"How many goblins, trolls and dwarves still walk the Earth? What royal courts still linger in decrepit old stations of cities that run on electricity, rather than on fairy-magic? How many Kings and Queens and Princes and Warriors left, _Nu-ah-tha_?"

It was when Witch called him on his given name in that strange voice of hers, hardly pressed by the burden of a half forgotten accent that Nuada woke as if from a spell.

"What light to shine in the Dark, when all the lights are out?"

* * *

><p><em>AN: Review? Pretty please with chocolate on top? I know you read and I'd really like to know how I'm doing here…_

**DISCLAIMER: Nuada and Othello are definitely not mine, but one of them is a hell of an inspiration!**


	4. Interlude one

- _In which Nuada approves of proper introductions - _

"What do you call yourself?" he asked in the tones of one who will not have his rights disputed by a nameless creature – thing – _woman_ wearing incredibly tattered-what-once-could-have-been-vaguely-considered-as-clothes-and-not-the-empty-bottom-of-a-dirty-old-sack.  
>Witch bristled.<p>

"Why, what do _you_ call _yourself_?" Because she had a few ideas, her tone seemed to insinuate.

Nuada growled. His growl commanded an answer. Nuada was very good at commanding things out of people. He instilled the same discipline in all gestures of his body. He was one with the command. When he commanded, things got done and Witch answered:

"I do not call myself much at all and there is no one to call me something else so Witch will do just fine…"

"Good. So be it!" the Prince approved haughtily (truthfully, in his heart of hearts, what Nuada was actually thinking was that as far as names go that was really a rotten one).

"…but _you_ may call _me _Mighty Witch!"

"…"

If Nuada were a sentence, he'd be a capitalized, bolded negative such as** Not Impressed** or **Not Amused** or **Definitely Not Amused**.

"…no? How 'bout Miss Witch then? But just on special occasions."

Nuada now knew why curiosity killed furry little grooming animals.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Just a little something that didn't make it in the chapters and Nuada was simply too savvy in the movie not to poke fun at – "demon born of a womb of shadows" and all that. _

**Review? I would really make me really really happy…really!**


	5. Chapter 5

- _Just build your hunger and your power from your loneliest days - _

Nuada paced the room relentlessly, his long strides cramped by what seemed to him to be an ever decreasing space. He felt caged and his fingers convulsed rhythmically in a nervous habit he had struggled with since childhood. The walls of Witch's abode bore down on him and the smells of the decaying earth sent an unpleasant message to his already frayed nerves.

The message rang so: there was no way out. Past the door there was only darkness and cold. At least here, Witch's fire kept the shadows long, but warm.

Nuada cringed.

Witch…

The elf woman, a stranger to his kin, though diminutive in size – his own sister would have towered over her – radiated an unmovable presence he found disconcerting. First of all, there was a peculiar solidness to her in comparison with other surrounding objects that baffled him immensely. He had already discerned himself to be in full possession of his mental and physical faculties – such as they were. Getting up and about had proven a useful employment that had gotten him back in touch with the motor functions of his body. Muscle memory had done its part and now Nuada felt more like himself. And even though the world was quieter and even though his mind struggled fruitlessly to cover an immense nothingness in search of the one voice he could no longer hear and even though his soul seemed to have shrunk and compressed in a tight ball of bitter loneliness, even so… Witch's presence was as solid as a rock, etched in the back of his mind and more literally at the back of his head.

Nuada chanced a glance over his shoulder. Raggedy looking and her hair a mess of indecisive curls, she stood out clearly against the backdrop of fire and hearth. The world around her stretched and blurred, while he could count the blotches of dirt and dust on an otherwise porcelain-pale face. Witch's silence was a conversation onto itself and her manner of speech betrayed some sort of intellectual elevation he had not expected in one of the dark ones.

Nuada suspected she _knew_ things, much in the same way as creators knew their works, for she spoke with the type of conviction only found in truth or madness. He felt peculiarly disinclined to doubt her, now that the facts were sinking in. Her words rang through his blood in weird harmonics that confused him more than the unfocused quality of this new world he had been thrust in. She was _real_ to him in a way that reality was not. And although a part of him insisted that it made no sense, not even for the magical world of _faery_, another, vastly more substantial side he felt he had no control over was getting the hang of things with increased and somewhat worrying velocity.

Nuada was magical by nature, Witch was magical by design, and with that thought in mind, Nuada deigned her to be no different than something that would come out of a very good goblin forge, with the added bonus of a conscience. This way, her _normality _was restored, simply because Nuada understood design and could even deal with and handle the slightly more magical types of contraptions.

However, this did not put to rest the matter of her total disrespect for authority – an authority that as a royal, Nuada had never had questioned, even in his darker days. It was undeniable – and even he didn't dare to disillusion himself about it – that Nuada had always been rebellious, but never truly disrespectful. Not to his liege, not to his people.

Witch, on the other hand, looked disdainfully at tiny particles of air. It was unseemly. It was un-elvish. It was – Nuada shuddered in impotent fury – almost _human_.

And that, dead or alive or whatever he now was, was something he could not bring himself to trust.

Witch watched the Prince simmering about, his golden garments rustling insistently against a noiseless background. She watched his hands, never still, fists clenching and unclenching, every time grasping nothing but air. His thumbs would twitch every so often, a gesture she suspected he had no control over.

Nuada does not like to not have control, she mused.

He doesn't like to be cold or he would have fled right through the barely concealed door. He doesn't know what to do.

Witch smiled wolfishly. There had been a look of childishness and petulance – a tribute to his sister, she guessed - to his moon-fraught features that was now ebbing away under her very eyes. Frustration and anger were carving an edgier look into his face. The crazed warrior within him was now faced with the hunter that lurks in all beings that have mastered a kill – or one too many. Soon, Witch knew, he'd forget his songs of honour and learn the tunes of blood. Faery blood, with its silver tang, dark and powerful. So she waited patiently for the Prince to make his resolution. She had all the time in the world.

Nuada had not come to a resolution as of yet, but he did make a startling discovery:

"We are in Bethmoora."

"In the Citadel, yes."

"I know this room."

Witch shrugged. She was not picky about her lodgings.

"It is full of memory" she conceded non comittaly.

There were parchments on the shelves in the walls, gone indecipherable with time and the curse of silence that had befallen the great elf city and the table Nuada had ravished during supper bore the marks of ink and quills. Witch could not _see_ past that. Bethmoora had never been her home and its soul resisted her powers. If she felt anything at all, it came in waves from Nuada and her life blood now thrumming in his veins. He was royal and royally strong. The magic of Aeglin still rang true in this Son of Earth. Aeglin's and something else's.

Witch darkened. _A curse on Bethmoora_, she thought viciously.

Nuada had stopped pacing some time ago, lost in thelong halls of his memory.

"It used to be a study room…"

_A curse on Bethmoorans!_

Witch kept getting darker, the black of her robes seeping into her skin and into her eyes until they were pools of liquefied obsidian, shimmering and cold.

_A curse! A curse on all the _Suns of…

Witch saw white. Or a shade of gold so pale it looked moonlit white.

"You summoned me from a place you cannot tread. Now I forbid you to go where I cannot follow."

Nuada's hand slid from her face and wound its five silvery fingers around her neck. His hold was silken tight.

"Hate fuels your rage. And when you rage, it would seem I rage too."

The silk tightened.

Witch managed a simpering smile despite the chokehold.

"You hate… I hate…"

Nuada blinked.

"…too."

He released her as one would release an infectious vermin.

Witch gasped for air momentarily and reclaimed her usual composure. It had been sometime since she'd last been deprived of oxygen. Many, many centuries ago, but Nuada did not need to know that. And she'd been as surprised as he was at the overwhelming strength of their emotions. If there was one thing Witch truly hated it would be her anticipations being thwarted. Time for a new approach.

"It looks as if we are bound to each other not only in interests, but also in spirit."

Nuada scoffed from the far end of the room. Audibly.

"I misjudged…us. I apologize."

Nuada was unsure as to what she was apologizing for in such an unapologetic manner. When he turned to her, Witch was up and hunching, her eyes cast down, her pointy ears sticking out oddly from among the unruly mass of hair.

"I have never known one as strong and true as you. I had forgotten that such power exists."

Strong and true. Somehow Nuada felt nothing of the sort.

"Not strong enough, nor true. Otherwise I wouldn't need…"

"…a witch's help?"

Witch drew near and looked at Nuada with clever red eyes that took on a distinct yellowish haze in the light of the fire.

"The humans…have tired of us. They are sensible creatures, alas. Not a magical bone in their body. We are being constantly forgotten, because no one believes. Not anymore. Not really. We fade because no one remembers our names. No songs for the lost ones."

_Nu-ah-tha…_

"You do this, Nuada, my liege, and I will forge you a song worthy of remembrance. And in their time of need, when Darkness from Above shall trample through the Cities of Earth, men shall sing it in despair. And Nuada, Silverlance, Sun of his people will never be forgotten."

"Do this? Vanquish the Darkness from Below and you will sing me a song of power? A little crow like you?"

"I am a skylark, my liege, and I will sing my songs for you. Death shall have no power over them and you will live forever."

Nuada laughed a bitter silver laugh.

"You are a witch, Witch, and a devil. Barely taller than an imp."

"Imps would take offense to that, my liege, should they believe you said it."

A smile broke on Nuada's lips and lingered there before springing away into the shadows.

"And who made you the redeemer of our kind? Tell me true, so I may know who exactly I am to strike a bargain with…"

"I am no redeemer, my liege, I offer no absolution."

"Just songs."

"My liege…"

"Enough!"

Witch stilled, her eyes now boring into his reproachfully. No respect, Nuada thought, nothing holy.

"I am Nuada to you, as you are Witch to me, until I am something other than the Lord of Dust and Decay."

Nuada looked around him, pleased that he had found the perfect description for the room of his memories. Never had he liked the dust the old grimoires gathered even in his youth and reading of the rise and fall of his ancestors unnerved him more than he did his teachers.

"Then tell me, _Nu-ah-tha_, what is your call?"

Witch's voice, soft and sultry as a perfectly decadent song, had now turned sharp as steel ripping through old velvet curtains.

Nuada took Witch's hand.

"My weapons…"

He pulled her closer.

"My armour…"

And whispered in her ear.

"…And your songs!"

* * *

><p><strong>DISCLAIMER: <em>Hellboy II<em> and _Get you by_ by La Coka Nostra belong to their respective owners, none of which are me.**

_A/N: …Review? I would really like to hear what you think of all this._


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Happy New Year, out with the old, in with the new! And….please review?**

_Give me all your true hate_

_and _

_I'll translate it in your bed_

_Into never seen passion_

_That is why I am so mad_

_About you _

As it turned out, Witch didn't sing much or – the way she liked to put it - she didn't sing any songs "you'd like to hear right now" and, subsequently, Nuada couldn't wipe the smirk off her face fast enough. However, watching her twist her little lithe body through the jagged mechanical teeth of the great golden wheels in the Army Chamber searching for his lost – _discarded_, the Prince viciously reconsidered as an afterthought – weapons, he didn't complain. Much. Especially when her tattered skirt got caught in the process. The ripping sound, curt and shrill, was sacrilegious to his ears.

"Must you be so careless?" _And deaf? _"I warned you the opening was too tight!"

Honestly, he thought she'd just _spirit _his weapons back to him, for, surely, the bonds she toyed with would extend between a warrior and his prized instruments. After millennia of use, weren't they a mere extension of his own limbs? He felt the severance acutely enough.

From the depths of the Chamber, Witch's reply came - despite the laborious breaths of air heavily intoxicated with dust - in quite a mouthful.  
>"I confess to having a lesser experience with openings, tight or otherwise, but seeing as I'm the one crawling on hands and knees in this filth looking for <em>one's <em>lance, one might think themselves content and complain in silence should they feel so inclined." An ominous silence descended upon the great round chamber. Witch's mood-detector was, unfortunately, less than stellar at the best of times. And so was her sense of propriety.

"Or is the sight of my naked thigh insulting your princely sensibilities?"

Nuada, on the other hand, didn't do speechless very well, so he turned to killing her with logic.

"Witch, _my _princely sensibilities are safe from _your _naked thigh" – and, by the stars above, how he was thankful he didn't stutter – " as you are currently removed from my line of sight."

A pause (and really, he should have seen that coming).

"Tell me you didn't think about it."

Of course, he lied in reply to the poorly veiled challenge. He was, after all, quite the dastardly foe.

Witch merely laughed and proceeded in her convulsions to bang her head quite hearably against an inconspicuously low structure.

The Prince allowed a tiny smile to blossom at the corner of his lips. Blossom and die.

"Are you trying to be particularly crass with me, Witch? For it seems the fates are not in your favour."

A shuffling noise and a few grunts later, Witch issued something along the lines of:

"Trying…yes…for you…bloody…"

And then a loud and triumphant _Aha! _accompanied by the tinkling of metal. Nuada's heart soared. His woes would soon near their timely end.

As it were, when Witch emerged carrying his weapons, Nuada was halfway through fidgeting and all the way through barely repressed impatience. He would have strode to her and snatched them from her hands in the tiny heartbeat of a hummingbird, but princes did not _stride_, unless it was in battle, and they definitely did not _snatch_, but demanded and were offered. So, he merely straightened his stance and very deliberately extended his hands with the air of one who is about to receive what is rightfully his.

The Army Chamber, golden and blue, dimmed, cooled and faded as Witch walked to the rim, a silvery spear in one hand and a sword in the other. The markings glowed gently on the handles, amber and black. Not for the first time did Nuada see Witch in a distinctly clearer light and, while gripping his weapons, power swirled around her in a rush of dust and sand. He imagined he could see faceless faces in the whirlwind and the impression of wings and other dark things, but the Witch stood tall and true and unconcerned.

A flick of her wrists and a flash of her pearly smile and the familiar weight of sword and spear settled comfortably in his own hands.

"Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas!"

Nuada glowered at the decidedly human greeting and briefly wondered where could she have picked it up, but the magical silver after which his own name was fashioned put a stopper to that particular line of stern reprimand.

He felt whole again.

Witch just felt accomplished and somewhat worse for the wear. She sat down, dangling her feet over the edge and watched Nuada getting reacquainted with his treasured possessions. Witch pondered, for a fact was beginning to insistently pick her brain like a vulture setting itself up for a light, livery desert. She watched the young Bethmooran princeling go through the warm up sequence of his spear artistry, studied the movements of his sword play, crude as they were during this impromptu training session and reveled in the notion that much work had to be done in order to break him thoroughly enough so that his moves could not be duplicated and parried.

Nuada – Witch ascertained – had precision where his foes had passion. A lesson he had obviously foregone to learn from his beating at the hands of the Red Demon. Precision without passion was a forest under frost. Sparkling and enchanting, but brittle to the hardest of touch. Passion without precision, well now, Witch thought as the silver spear twirled in the air, that was chaos.

Nuada had only learnt hatred and madness from his time spent in the world of men. Teaching him passion, Witch sighed, would require immersing him in a completely different world than even he, the rogue prince of Bethmoora, had ever experienced. And there was no time to baby him into it either.

With a lean thrust, Nuada was done and once his weapons were safely tucked away in their harness, he turned to Witch, dangling her feet on the rim of a big – and slightly tarnished – golden wheel. The power he had glimpsed in her seemed to have faded to an indulgent breeze wafting through the many cracks in the walls. It then occurred to the Prince that Witch's jeering tilt of the lips lighting sparks on her sooty face bore no happy thoughts as far as he was concerned.

"You are not a very good witch, are you?" he mused out loud.

Her feet were small and slim, the soles of her leathery boots thin and thinning.

"No. But you are not a very good prince, so that makes us even."

Nuada cringed, but he was past petty lies with this witch, defective as she might have been. Instead he offered her a morsel of truth.

"As far as dignitaries go, I wasn't all that my Father had hoped me to be. My swords have always spoken better than my words. But in court…one of them I had to surrender to the other."

It had not been an easy choice. And even then…

"Warmongerer, they called me. Behind my back", his crooked smile came easier this time around, "like the bleating crows that they were. Tell me, what do warriors crave if not…" he looked about himself as if he could find the answer etched in the dredge of a decrepit army chamber, "…if not battle? Surely there are greater sins than wanting to do battle to protect one's people! But they would not see it so. Perhaps my manner is too blunt, my mien too honest, the fire in my heart too bright. My sister…"

Nuada faltered.

"What about her?"

"…my sister was better versed than I in such matters. My lord Father treasured her counsel, oft more closely than mine."

"Hn."

Witch straightened her gait, picking at a substantial speck of dust, and plunged:

"Your father was king. Kings do battle like other men play chess. By moving pieces on a checkered board. Sometimes you play with the whites, sometimes you go dark. This way, you always know the moves of your opponent. You say your father disregarded your counsel for your sister's good-natured heart in a matter that concerned the survival of all Elfland. In his place, wouldn't _you_ have done the _same_? Wouldn't _you_ have done _anything _for your beloved sister?"

Witch rested her chin in the palm of her hand and looked expectantly at him, mentally picking at the scabs of his wounded heart and drinking up the fresh blood that spilled. Nuada could feel it flowing into her, feeding her dwindling power until it clustered into ponderous storm clouds hovering about them. He desperately wanted to say _No! Never!_ and couldn't. Couldn't have sacrificed _her_, not because of their bond, but because he genuinely loved her. For his sister, he would have turned his back on all worlds. He would have found a way for them to be together, until the dimming of the world. Together. Forever.

But that…had not been his sister's wish. Some had called her a pacifist. She was not. She simply ever wished to live as long as it was given to her and fade and die honorably, respecting a truce that was a disgrace to her stature, because it was _the right thing to do._

And Nuada couldn't help hating her for it, for so easily doing what he found so utterly impossible to perform at the standards required of him by a fading fairy court: the right thing, that lawfully honorable deed – keep the promise made to the humans and their wretched _godless_ world at the price of his own obscurity.

"What would you have done, mighty witch?"

Witch stretched her hands to the high ceilings and arched her back until the bones popped.

"It rains gold in the court of Bethmoora, does it not? Well, _I_ would have made it rain blood."

Sometimes, when Nuada looked at her, truly looked at her, at Witch with her torn and dirty skirts and incredibly sooty skin, at her eyes of gold and red and black and her hacked hair, at the woman of his kind, but not of his kin, dark and wicked as a baby night-gaunt, the picture she painted gave him pause.

She was a mystery he could not untangle as of yet, simply because there was no clear beginning with her, nowhere to start with. And Nuada had trifled with many a great puzzle in his lifetime. A good opening was all one needed to prevent one's self from flailing around in the darkness.

With Witch however… there came about the damnable pause. That she was disreputable there was no doubt. No elf dabbled in the type of sorcery Witch professed. No magical creature, seelie or unseelie, lost their names much in the way Witch had lost hers. She was damned, and double damned for her poisonous tongue. In all his years of wandering, Nuada had never been spoken to with such scorn. Even in the trashiest of Troll Markets, folk kept their tongues less loosely tied than Witch did. No man had addressed him with such unfettered language. Nor woman. Sure, her tactless innuendos had not missed their mark, but she was unlike any creature of the female persuasion that he had ever encountered. _That_ was however _not _the problem.

The women of his clan, flawless and fair, paled in comparison to his sister, his twin, his better half. Her and her alone he had ever deemed attractive. Playthings he had had aplenty, in different shapes and sizes and oft times even colour, but they nurtured and fed a different need and one of little consequence. Nuala had been beautiful inside and out and the bond they had shared bespoke for this truth. She partook in the same airy and ethereal beauty native to the fairy folk, enhanced only by the blue she favoured in her gowns. She was his sister, the most beautiful part of his soul and his conviction had not changed, not even now, when her light had faded. Women of the human world could not hope to compare, artificial and hollow as they were. And the exceptions were so rare, they made no difference.

But Witch…Witch was alien in the strictest sense of the word. She was not without beauty of features and underneath the unkempt glamour, her body was as flawless as the finest wrought porcelain. And yet, a dark one she was, not short and swarthy, but a faeryling, quick to cause offense and irreverent. And powerful. She possessed a sultry, insidious type of power, the likes of which he had never seen before and had never believed could possibly exist among elf-kind. It was not magic, faery, forest or otherwise. For all the unsettling feelings she caused to lodge in the pit of his stomach – and quite a lot of them homicidal – Nuada had to admit that a conjurer of tricks Witch definitely was not. The power she said she sensed in him, Nuada could sense double that in and around her. His Lord Father could command an army greater and stronger and more enduring than the very foundations of the earth and still he had faded upon the touch of steel. Himself, he did not exclude from the same fate. But the clawing she had endured at his own hands had marred nothing of her face. It still stared at him with a lopsided grin and fiery eyes, a shade too crimson in the fading light.

"Do you find me peculiar, Nuada?"

"I try not to," he admitted with a grudge.

Witch hopped on the floor, landing gracefully on her hands and feet in a flurry of frayed silks and dust.

"Is it working?"

Nuada considered her question long and hard. All he could come up with was a question that had formed as he watched her drown in an electrifying sea of true power, for however short a time.

"What can I do against the Darkness Below that one such as you cannot?"

Yes, in shreds was his dignity, but Witch paid it no mind.

"You can help me find yourself an armor."

The most abominable fault Nuada could find in his unwanted companion had – most surprisingly – nothing to do with her beleaguering use of words, but with something more …substantial. Witch hunched. He hated it when she did it. Every bit of him that was a groomed royal rebelled against her sloppy countenance.

"Why _me?_"

He itched to straighten her up, grab her shoulders and push her back into a more seemly position. One that would befit her unusual endowments. Maybe then her hair wouldn't look so mussed and her face so haunted.

"Is not Bethmoora the ruling clan of Elfland? Are you not the Prince of your people? Is it not your duty?"

Because he had his treasured weapons back, Nuada felt he could afford some lenience towards the disobedient witch and casually followed her steps out the Army Chamber and across the stone causeway.

"Are you asking me that or yourself?"

Witch scoffed. His scrutinizing gaze was suddenly beginning to irk her. She had an urge to slap some of his princely insolence out of him. She tolerated none of it outside her own behaviour. Nobody else had seemed to do it half as well as herself and this princeling was not sitting well with that particular record.

"Very well then: Bethmoora is the ruling clan of Elfland, you are the Prince of your people and it _**is **_your duty."

"Is it just me or do you sound somewhat out of breath?"

"Enough with the questions!"

Witch had raised her voice. Nuada noted that it had never occurred before. Good, the first sign of weakness, a small sore now that he would take into his care until it festered later.

"Vexing, is it not? To have someone answer your questions with a question…"

Witch turned to him and smiled.

"I wonder why you said it. That you weren't much of a dignitary. You sure are pushy and prissy enough for the task."

Nuada ground his teeth and prayed for patience and the wisdom to stay his weapons no matter what happened next. Witch carried on regardless of the undercurrents of mal-intent wafting off Nuada in spades.

"If anything, _Nu-ah-tha_, you are a fine study of self-importance. And _that_ is your best honed skill."

The spear swerved in the air and halved a reasonable amount of sparkling dust, but no witch.

She crooned from behind him, a shadow in the dark, her voice – the chill that crept up his spine, unbidden, unwanted and unloved.

"An exercise in futility, _Nu-ah-tha_. But good reflexes, nonetheless, my lord."

She sashayed her way past him, all tatters and rags, and beckoned him to follow.

"I believe I owe you an armor still. Consider it a gift, in exchange for the impropriety of my ways."

"Am I to understand you are to charge a price for my weapons?"

"You may understand what you want. When I'll want something, you'll know it. It is the witching way."

Nuada fell silent. Witch's blood clamored in his veins and there was anger flowing in it. A gift and a favour were more binding than any spell Witch might have conjured.

Witch led him back to her lair, sifting so fast, he had to continuously look up to see her perched atop crumbling ruins. She reached ever higher, a splotch of blackness against a bleak background, only her eyes, fire-lit beacons in the dark, heralding his safe passage to their make-shift home. Once there, Witch began frantically looking for his promised gift, while he took a seat near the hearth.

He didn't feel like unstrapping his harness. Though uncomfortable, the weight of his weapons at his back was more than welcome. And the Witch's giddiness was wearing him out. When finally she unearthed a tightly wrapped parcel of…something, Nuada was well past caring.

"Come now, open it!" she entreated, stuffing the large bundle right under his rather fallen nose. A wise move for it effectively jerked him from his stupor.

Forced gallantry Nuada could do even – or quite literally – in his sleep.

"A most praise-worthy gift."

"You haven't opened it yet" Witch remarked sullenly.

"That's how much I trust you."

He beamed at her and thought he had managed to strike a rather charming pose when his fingers brushed the distinct texture of the most exquisite war raiment he had ever donned. Or seen, for that matter.

And it was complete. Body armor and wrist bands gleamed liquid black in the light of the fire, a silvery wiring matching the engravings on his spear and sword elegantly etched in the fabric. And what a fabric it was…

"A witch's craft is stronger than any goblin magic. This here is hellhound scales and dragon's horn. Or was it the other way around?"

Witch had kneeled between his spread legs, guiding his hand over the luscious surface of the finely wrought armor.

"No matter. Now you must break it, flay it, wither and pull it, wear it, tear it, slitter and grill it until all your challengers are dead. And when enough blood has been spilt, perhaps you'd make a better king."

She smiled and their comingled blood, coursing swiftly through his veins, stirred, slowed and paused.

"And then…", Witch gazed adoringly at his new attire, "…then, I'll sing you your songs."

* * *

><p><strong>DISCLAIMER: I played with Hellboy II, Hooverphonic, Rurouni Kenshin, Bleach and CoR and put them back in their respective boxes, for they are not mine. <strong>

**PLAYLIST:**

_**Hooverphonic – Mad about you**_

_**Bleach Jigoku Hen OST – Lucifer's Dance Part C**_

**PS: A review would really kick off the New Year on a positive note for me :)**


	7. Interlude two  Solitary Rock

_- Oh if these walls could talk, I would talk right back  
>I would talk, I would talk 'til they fade to black - <em>

And the Mountain said unto Rock: "You shall be Rock. But you are a wee little Rock. You'll get kicked around easily." Mountain, by sheer magnitude alone, considered this to be the ultimate of dooms, for mountains were complacent beings and heavy and accustomed with the passage of time, rain and other corrosive elements leaving miniscule marks upon their faces that took eons to register – basically they weren't very keen on going up and about.

But Rock did not know that. When Rock was born and the world was young and things had yet to settle into place – except for, naturally, mountains, who were anything but unsettled and were patiently waiting, as was their wont , for the concept of Mountain to transit into the magic of Mountain – Rock did not know great many a things. Magic was raw at the dawn of time and quite indecisive. And from that peculiar difficulty Magic encountered in setting its all round purposes straight that Rock, tiny, durable and restless Rock, came to be.

First, it tumbled down a hill. Gently, of course, as mountains, under the gentle breeze of magic, were still asleep. Rock was a child by then, plump and fresh and signaling _Dinner!_ to every _ogre_ that dwelt in the shadows of the sleepy hills. Rock asked if she could play. They came at her with clumbs of iron, pelts of rain and hoods of thunder. Rock shivered and shook but she was too tough to chew so they cast her away.

Sniffling, Rock met the _dwarves_, small, squat and stony. They forged her jewels and took her deep underground, where very few dared to venture. Rock was young when she entered the Kingdom of Stone. The dwarves clad her in pretty clothes spun of the dewy web of the mechanical silver spider. They wrung her out like they did their precious metals, hammering her rough edges until Rock was as perfect as a perfectly fashioned diamond in its pretty gold casing. But Rock grew tall in the stony underworld. Tall and dark and longing for the Sun, for without him she withered like the flowers that never grew down in the depths of the Stone Kingdom. With Sun came Life and Love and the Fire in Rock's heart.

Magic was tricky like that. It cast a heavy spell, pretty for all its deceitfulness, on little Rock until Rock put aside her princely raiments and ventured back into the world above where Sun leaned a little closer.

But the world is not so young anymore and Rock is tall and true and clad in sparkling diamonds. She is a Rock, sharp around the edges, because diamonds cut deep, and the world marvels at her beauty. But the sky where the Sun dwells is ever out of her reach so Rock tries to reach higher.

"Fashion me a sword" she commands her dwarf lords in the dead of the night, when she returns to their stone halls "so I may wake the mountain giants and command upon them to take me to the skies where Sun abodes when his light shines no more."

On his cold throne, the tallest of dwarves, his beard a long river of mists, looks upon Rock, night after night, as she chants her pleas, and rues the day he fashioned Rock to their deadly liking. He is old, this king of dwarves, and even though his sires had been great and fair, he was born stunted and dark. So dark in fact he slipped through the world above unnoticed and uncared for. But that had been many years ago, when the dawn of time was a mere wisp of light across the skies of the world. He knew not Sun, but only the bejeweled sparkle of Rock's golden eyes. Nothing should shine greater than that, he thinks, so he fashions her a sword and a curse.

The world is young and the magic raw, the dwarf king muses, she will be none the wiser.

The sword is mighty in Rock's hands. With it Rock raises mountains from their slumber and as they slowly crawl towards the sky, Rock climbs with them, sword in hand and swifter than shadow. But mountains are old and sluggish and forgetful and not all crest to their full height. Only one, youngest of them all, cracks its craggy eyes and gazes at the sky. Rock looms ever taller.

"Rise, rise fast and high so I may reach the skies where Sun's asleep when his light shines no more and taste of Life and Love and Fire."

And Mountain says unto Rock: "I may rise and rise until I bump the crown of heavens and still Sun sleeps ever higher, little Rock."

But Rock prods him with her sword and Mountain lurches to the skies above until they bump the crown of heavens.

Sun sleeps ever higher.

The stars are a constellation of tears in Rock's eyes. Above the world, on the single, highest rock in Elfland, she weeps for the Sun, waiting for the Golden Lord to rise and warm away her tears.

* * *

><p>There was a great vault in Bethmoora, Nuada remembers, that bore imprinted on its widest wall a fresco of <em>The Wait – <em>a lone woman sulking from the top of a particularly dreary world. He had never known who'd drawn it or what it was doing, even half-forgotten as it was, in a city as full of life as his own. But Nuada remembered nevertheless the mournful cold that had crept and coiled round his back whenever he chanced to pass by the shaded chamber. He'd dared to enter the dreaded vault once and it wasn't sorrow that invaded his every cell with the malevolence of a jaded troll – it was loneliness, the likes of which he'd never felt, what with the ever present link he shared with his magical twin.

It was the same type of loneliness he now felt in Witch's lair, as things began to slip further out of place with each moment that the Witch slumbered on, obediently, at his feet. It preyed on him, this loneliness, like a starved warg, so much so that Nuada felt compelled to nudge Witch awake with his jolting knee.

The fires had grown dim so Witch readily decided that "Magic is dwindling here. We can linger in Bethmoora no longer."

He really couldn't fathom why he said it, but as the words left his mouth, Nuada clearly saw in his mind's eye the look the solitary woman on the rock had given him when he had so irreverently trespassed on her land, that one time in the Bethmooran vault he was never able to find again – it had been expectant.

* * *

><p>"<em>You are right. The wait is over."<em>

* * *

><p><strong>AN: There is a beautiful drawing by Luis Royo, called _The Wait_, that greatly inspired this chapter. You should go check it out, it well worth it :) **

…**and a review would be nice too!**

**PLAYLIST: Zeds Dead feat. Omar Linx – Jackie Boy**


End file.
